Celebrating a life underground

Cynthia Robins, OF THE EXAMINER STAFF

Published
4:00 am PST, Friday, February 10, 1995

IN THE San Francisco underground, art names run rampant. It's not that the progenitors of hit-and-run guerrilla art "happenings" don't want to lay claim to their creations with their tax-paying handles. But if you had a choice between being known as Michael Collins or Diet Popstitute, which would you choose?

Eight years ago, Collins, a k a Diet Popstitute, joined with Alvin Orloff and Bradley Kellogg to become the core of the Popstitutes, a loosely organized alternative theatrical troupe that celebrated its campiness and gay sexuality in a floating circus of drag queens, muscle boys, GGs (genuine girls) and boisterous gender-tweakers.

From the beginning, it was theater as looney tunes and silly spectacle. Collins was the costumer who often strutted in suits made of the tattered remains of lime green furry toy animals. Once, the Popstitutes staged an Easter show at the DNA Lounge that featured 30 naked boys popping out of huge colored eggs. Always, it was organized chaos where anybody who wanted some face time in the footlights was invited to come up onstage.

Collins is now seriously ill; he lives in a subsidized AIDS facility on Market Street and his antic personality has been altered and quieted by his disease.

To raise money for him, friends have assembled an all-star cast of performers, many of whom owe their careers and infamy to Collins' organizational genius, in a gala benefit to celebrate his 38th birthday and the fifth anniversary of the roaming nightclub Klubstitute, a Popstitutes spinoff. The benefit, appropriately entitled "Tributestitute," is on Saturday at the Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th St.

The stars of the evening include real-girl camp chanteuse Connie Champagne, drag queens Pussy Tourette, Miss X and Bambi Lake, reverse-drag star Leigh Crow, a k a Elvis Herselvis, and the Fish Stix, three lip-synching dragsters led by couturier David Glammermore.

Art names seem to abound here.

"I used to be a noisy, obnoxious drunk," Collins said candidly one sunny morning last week. The man sitting in the Orbit Cafe on Upper Market sipping an iced coffee lightened with a generous dollop of cream was not the picture of health.

But though he may now tire a little easily, he still is a lively spirit who looks out at the world through confetti-patterned diamond-shaped eyeglasses. He's still a guy who'll dye his hair bright blue and write

"DIET" across the back of his skull in magenta letters.

The drunk-tough persona that combined ACT UP queer sensibility with bad manners changed over the years. Especially when Collins discovered he was HIV-positive.

He dropped out of the raucous club scene for a while, lived in Berkeley and, according to his friend and fellow alternative theater producer Phillip R. Ford, "came to terms with his HIV and went through an AA program. It has been a transformation for him, this illness."

Ford, who considers Collins his friend, conscience and mentor, says "Diet has evolved. He became less the selfish rock star and much more the cabaret king. I could ask him for advice and he was the one person who would tell me the truth. Diet has taught me leadership and responsibility."

Collins / Diet says he featured himself a kind of Andy Warhol. At least, the Warhol who said that everyone who wants to be a star should have the opportunity.

There were times when the Popstitutes performed, says Collins, that the stage was crowded with 40 to 50 people in outrageous costumes or various states of undress.

It was "a way for everyone to be a star for at least 15 minutes." Not to mention, he laughs ruefully, a chance to meet cute guys.

Michael Collins was a 19-year-old working-class boy from Pittsfield, N.Y., when he came to California nearly 20 years ago. He didn't start out to be an underground impresario. He, like so many others, just wanted to have fun. It was the glory times in the Castro, when disco blared from every window and mustachioed, plaid-shirted boys walked arm and arm and kissed on street corners.

"The Sex Pistols had played Winterland," remembered Collins. "I hung out more in punk circles than gay ones. I've never been fond of Donna Summer. . . . I've never felt "gay.' I'm queer. My gayness is much more "in your face' and spontaneous."

That punk sensibility still permeates the Popstitutes and all of their subsequent incarnations, including Klubstitute, which has has been a fertile petri dish for any number of performance artists, singers, sometime actors, drag artistes and sex workers-turned-poets like Danielle "Hell" Willis, a former stripper who is now booked in legitimate venues like Climate Theatre's O Solo Mio festival.

"What we all had in common," said Collins, "is that we were all performance artists living through a devastating epidemic. In the Castro, no one was really going out. And a few of my friends and I didn't want to see people so depressed."

Collins and his friends, loosely known as the Popstitutes, started performing on open mike night at Club Chaos, the industrial music night at the Crystal Pistol, formerly the Fickle Fox, a bar on Valencia Street.

"It was concurrent with the rise of ACT UP," Collins said. "Chaos was always packed with people who were coming from ACT UP meetings. It seems that for a year or so, I was going to a protest a week."

Because of the natural juxtaposition of the Popstitutes and ACT UP, the result was a melange of political protest and performance art. "If it's funny enough and has enough moving parts," said Collins, "then people laughed along with the message. . . . We figure anything goes. As long as it's funny and plays well."

"Tributestitute," at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th St. at Capp, is a benefit. Minimum suggested donation, $10. For more information, call (415) 905-8806.&lt;